All It Takes Is A Little Love

It has been a long journey since one of my husband Mike’s doctors  gave him the news that he had prostate cancer. After that diagnosis I learned a great deal about the PSA test that led to a whole series of MRIs, biopsies and PET scans. I found out what his Gleason score indicated and accompanied him to many different specialists until we ended sitting in front of a radiation oncologist who announced that Mike would need thirty nine radiation treatments stretched over eight weeks. First, there would be more tests, biopsies and PET scans followed by a surgery designed to create a barrier so that the radiation would only affect the cancerous area. 

It took many weeks from May to much of June before Mike was finally at the outpatient center where the radiation would take place. After mapping the affected area he was finally ready to begin a process that felt almost endless in the beginning. Luckily the side effects that Mike had were somewhat minimal and more irritating than painful. He would have to arrive each day with a full bladder and an empty bowl for the radiation to be effective. It took awhile but we soon learned how to stay on target with that demand. 

We found new friends in the waiting room that was filled with patients and family members. We watched as some of the folks completed the process and as others first began theirs. We came from far flung places and different backgrounds but we found common ground with the challenges that we all shared. It was almost inevitable that we would get to know and like different individuals with all types of cancer. 

There was the real estate mogul who had once lived in Shreveport, Louisiana who often spoke of his daughters who would come to visit him and to shop. There was the Jewish lawyer who always wore his yarmulka who hid the damage done to his nose from the cancer that seemed to have brutally attacked him. They were sweet people who were anxious to return to good health and the routine of their lives before cancer became their daily focus. Everyone was optimistic and worried at one and the same time.

We watched joyful celebrations as one by one the people in the room finished their regimen of radiation and rang the bell signifying the end. We all smiled and clapped with each person who made it to the finish line because we understood how they were feeling. Their joy was our hope. Our hope was their joy. 

The people who worked at the facility were extraordinary. There was the receptionist at the front desk who greeted everyone each morning with a dazzling smile and hearty hello that told us that he really cared about each person who came his way. We began to look forward to seeing him and exchanging him with a fist bump or a laugh.

The woman behind the desk in the waiting room was patient and always scurrying around to be certain that everyone had water, soft drinks, coffee and snacks to tide them over as they nervously waited for their appointments to begin. She was patient even with the crankiest souls always trying to send vibes of concern for each person. 

Mike had two technicians who worked with him. They made him feel safe with their smiles and conversations and jokes. They learned what music he like to hear when he was inside the machine that aimed the radiation on the cancer. They never seemed to get frustrated or even tired as they worked from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon with not much in the way of a break. 

Then there was the doctor who gave a weekly update and explained every step of the way with precision, detail and confidence. His expertise was the panacea that grew ever more within reach with each passing week. 

Mike finally came to the end of the journey. We entered the building with mixed feelings. We were thrilled that his ordeal was over but we knew that we would miss all of those wonderful people. We brought flowers for the technicians and Mike wrote a card for everyone who was part of the program. As Mike went to the back for his last treatment I felt a flood of emotion as I sat with my daughter and son-in-law who had come to celebrate the moment. 

Later when Mike triumphantly rang the bell the whole room was beaming, clapping and shouting congratulations. It was over at least for now. Mike will follow up in three months to make certain that the task of eradicating the cancer is done. For the moment the anxiety is gone and only gratitude remains as we contemplate the miracle of it all ad think of the many who were there with us and many more who are yet to come. As my Grandpa Little always said, “These are the good old days!” Mike had reached the finish line and it felt so fine.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. For all of my life I have considered this place home. I married a man who was also born and raised in Houston. His ancestors came to Texas before it was a state. My grandmother was born in Texas at the end of the nineteenth century and took her last breath right here in Houston. 

I’ve travelled throughout the United States and to other countries and each time I have returned I have felt a sense of joy and security in being back home. I love my neighbors and most of the people I encounter in my city, but of late I find myself wondering if I want to be here anymore. I no longer have the feeling that I belong in this place since my votes are mostly overridden by voters who back individuals with whom my views are diametrically opposed. More and more often I wonder if it’s finally time to strike out for a new location where lawmakers seem to be kinder and more advanced in their thinking. I wonder if the Texas that I once felt so comfortable in will ever be the same. Somehow the laws being foisted on the citizenry fly in the face everything that I hold sacred. 

I finally got representation from a Congressperson who responds to my inquiries and votes for the issues in which I believe. Now even this is being threatened by a ridiculously outrageous decision by our governor to gerrymander the districts to insure that Republicans win five more Congressional seats in the midterm elections. I seriously can’t believe how the awful people running our state get reelected over and over again when they do nothing of merit for the people. 

They seem to think that it is a good idea to give thousands of dollars to families that want to send their children to private schools. They insist on banning books and putting the ten commandments on view in every classroom. They withhold funds for Houston seemingly out of vengeance for the many Democrats who are voted into our local offices. They took over our school district with a man of questionable credentials who has run off many of the finest teachers with his absurd ideas. I could go on and on but the point is that I feel as though I do not matter in my state anymore. I am invisible and made so purposely. 

I suppose that given my age it is most likely that I will endure my anonymity and use it to hide out until I draw my last breath. The idea of picking up stakes when I have so much invested in Texas is frightening. The places where I might like to live are so far away from the people that I love and so I suppose that my fate will be to simply endure the political environment that is so distasteful to me. My only hope is that eventually this too will pass. I want to believe that it will before I move on to my eternal reward. 

The majority of my grandchildren are looking for greener pastures and I can’t say that I blame them. Maybe I will be able to take turns visiting them in places where I feel more comfortable. I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself so that will mean only short moments of respite from the ugliness of Texas politics that makes me so incredibly sad. 

I used to boast about my home wherever I travelled. I spoke of the good people in my state and the landscape that represents so many different ecosystems. I felt that my voice was important to the state representatives and that my concerns were being addressed. I lulled myself into a kind of slumber during which I was not seeing how the changes were creating a Texas that is anathema to me. When I ultimately realized what had happened it was too late to stop the madness. Now so many of my fellow Texans just pull the R levers without really understanding what each of the individuals plan to do. 

I haven’t completely lost hope. I continue to have a bit of Pollyanna in me. Still, I find myself wondering what it would be like to live in Illinois or Colorado. I visit New York City and feel so at home. I imagine myself in Minnesota or even California, which is ironic given that I prayed to get back to Texas when I lived there as a child. If I really get carried away I think of how lovely it would be to live in Ireland or England or Canada. I always enjoy being in those places and feel the tug of my ancestors who came to America from there. Still, I know that being on a vacation is not the same as living somewhere for days and months and years. Reality always sets in when I concoct such dreams.

I am inching toward my eighties and at my age understand that there are no guarantees regarding how much longer I will be healthy or even alive. Considering a major move seems somehow silly and so I will have to find ways to deal with the sorrow that I feel in losing the Texas that I once knew. I felt so much better when I believed that I was living in a wonderful place with so many opportunities. Now I have seen the underbelly of my state and it is difficult to view. That gives me only the option of doing my best to rally around the good Texans attempting to bring our precious state back to a focus on all of its citizens. I suspect that there are more people like me than I can even imagine. it’s time to find them and rally with then until we fix the mess that has been made. We are Texans. Surely we can do this instead of just giving up and moving away. Time to quit crying and get to work. I don’t have a moment to lose.

I am from the generation that first grew up with television. In the early days everything was black and white, literally. The shows rarely ran for more than thirty minutes and there were only three channels until PBS came along. At a certain time each night each station played the national anthem and went off the air until morning. 

I spent many evenings watching comedy shows with my father and Captain Kangaroo each morning after he went to work. After he died my mother restricted the number of hours that my brothers and I were allowed to spend in front of the television. The only time when we got away with total freedom was on Saturday mornings when we tuned in to our favorite kid shows that aired until around noon. Since our mother often slept in a bit on the weekend we took full advantage of being able to watch Fury, Sky King, My Friend Flicka and a host of other programming. 

As we grew older our mother was a tiny bit more permissive in expanding our free time in front of what became known as “the boob tube.” We began to look forward to Bonanza each week and even imagined what it must have been like to see that show in living color for the first time. It would be many more years until I was actually treated to the luxury of watching my favorite shows in anything other than black and white and shades of grey. 

After I got married my husband and I were both busy continuing our college educations so our television was more of a piece of furniture than a center for entertainment. Eventually we got more settled and turned our attention to watching reruns of Star Trek late in the evening when my husband came home from a nightshift at the bank where he worked. I still recall those late night viewings with utter delight. 

When I was still in the hospital after my second daughter was born I remember watching Sesame Street just an hour or so after she entered the world. After that PBS became the gold standard for viewing in our home. My little girls grew up on the programing for children on that local public station. I often watched the shows with them and realized how delightful they were and how much all of us learned from them. My husband and I found ourselves spending more and more of our own viewing time on PBS as well enjoying Masterpiece Theater and other wonderful offerings that seemed to be a cut above the less elegant programing on the three big stations. 

That is not to say that we did not find joy from ABC, NBC, and CBS. We had our favorites on each channel and we got our local news from those stations. Soon enough we installed cable television and then went to streaming services. Our television screen grew in size with a sound system worthy of a movie theater. The whole world seemed to be at our fingertips and yet we found ourselves reverting back to PBS again and again. I once remarked that if we were forced to choose only one outlet to watch forevermore I would pick PBS without hesitation. 

I can’t imagine how anyone considers PBS to be too liberal or biased. They simply offer a wide variety of programming that is generally of higher quality than much of what is available on other channels. As for the news hour, there is no doubt in my mind that it is more fair and balanced than any other source. It is old school in that it does more reporting of facts than analyzing what is right and what is wrong. Even the editorial discussions are presented by people representing both liberal and conservative thinking. I have always seen the Public Broadcasting System as one of the best investments of our tax payer dollars but I also understood that they need more than government money to insure the quality of their programming so I have donated to the fundraising efforts for many years. 

I am a late comer to NPR radio. I mostly listened to music for most of my adult life but my tastes began to change a bit as I grew older. In the city where I live the airwaves on the radio are filled with conservative talk radio that is so one sided that it is annoying. There are also dozens of Christian radio stations and those that offer programing and music for virtually every ethnic group . I was looking for a more information oriented channel when I stumbled upon NPR. I haven’t changed stations since I found it. Like PBS it is filled with programming that keeps me up to date with what is happening locally and on the state level in Texas. On the national level I get to hear incredible offerings like The Moth where people tell their stories and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me which is a competition featuring the week’s news with a comic bent. I’ve learned how to cook and how to care for my car on NPR. It is a wonderful way to learn about music and musicians and to stay abreast to scientific inventiveness. 

I live in the fourth largest city in the United States so I hope that there will be enough of us supporting PBS and NPR to keep them going. I fear that we will soon be subjected to lots of advertisements and the kind of financial pressures that water down the freedom and honesty of other media sites. I am both saddened and angry that our Congressional representatives did not have enough foresight to keep these national treasures going and growing for now and the future.

I suspect that those who voted against funding for them have rarely if ever watched them. If they had taken to the time to see for themselves they would know that there is nothing suspect about these wonderful outlets. In fact, they are exactly the kind of responsible and educational sites that we should be wanting more and more. I’m ready to open my pocketbook to save these wonderful institutions that have been presenting quality programming for as long as I can remember. They are truely wonderful if we can keep them. 

Your feelings will fluctuate, Your well being will fluctuate Your performance will fluctuate. Your worth should not.

I saw this comment on Facebook and it made me think about the times that I have seen people of great courage dealing with horrific tragedies without the kind of emotional support that they should have received. All too often we expect people going through difficult experiences to be automatons when it comes to their everyday lives and their jobs. We don’t always give them the assistance and exceptions that they may actually need. 

I once worked with a woman who had breast cancer. She was so devoted to her students that she scheduled her treatments after the school day so that she would not have to send substitutes into her classroom. Of course she was not as energetic as she had always been but she was doing her very best to complete all of her duties. Sometimes she gave her students quiet work to do so that she might rest behind her desk and there were moments when she took longer than normal to grade their work because she came home from her treatments feeling nauseated and exhausted. Still, most of us marveled at her courage, optimism and determination to be with her students in spite of the challenging circumstances. 

Sadly the principal did not hold our view of this teacher. Instead she criticized her efforts and even threatened her with a bad evaluation if she continued to demonstrate lethargy. Ironically the administrator insisted that an active substitute would be a better alternative than a sickly teacher. Of course those of us on the faculty were stunned to hear about the teacher’s treatment by our boss. Somehow the principal had set aside the worth of a fellow human and focused instead the performance that she viewed as lacking. The administrator was blind to the incredible dedication and efforts of the teacher, seeing only superficial flaws that did little to blemish the herculean efforts that the educator was making. 

There will be times when each of us do not show our best selves. If we are worried about a loved one or carrying the pains of ill health we tend to be less like ourselves. It does not mean that we are slouching or trying to get by with shirking our responsibilities. It is only a sign that our challenges are bearing down on us and possibly even becoming overbearing. In such moments we would do well to find ways to support the person who is struggling. 

In the best job situations that I had everyone worked together. If someone was facing an emotional crisis the entire faculty found ways to ease the pressures of the job that the person had to do. We became available to step in and teach in tandem or even to watch the students while the teacher took a break. We showed the students how to be helpful as well. It was a community effort that paid off with a work environment that was forgiving and loving. It took into account the incredible worth of each person rather than constantly ranking and comparing us. 

I have known good people who donated some of their sick leave to other employees who were undergoing long term medical care. I have watched groups make plans to send food to the homes of ailing fellow workers. I have even participated in Saturday afternoon house cleaning for fellow teachers who were temporarily bed bound. Our gestures were small and took little effort on the part of each of us but they made a huge difference to the people who found themselves in precarious situations that might otherwise have left them feeling as though nobody really cared about what was happening to them. 

Our society is presently all too focused on stringent rules, bottom lines, scores and ratings. Employees are not always seen as humans but as numbers on balance sheets. We have people working multiple jobs and still struggling to pay for the basics of living. The imbalance of how we treat and value each other is growing ever more impersonal. We have all too often forgotten the importance of first seeing the worth of every single person. We speak of brilliance and power and wealth as things to pursue for a good life when in fact it is in working together and ensuring that everyone is okay that we are our best and feel our best. 

It is all too true that our feelings will fluctuate. We may be on top of the world one day and living in anguish another. Life has a way of sending unexpected tragedies our way. Just so, our well being will also fluctuate. A terrible storm may flood our home or a visit to a doctor may reveal a terrible illness. When such things happen to us it is only human that our performance will also fluctuate. We all hope that when we are not ourselves there will still be those who understand that our value has not changed and they will help us through our most horrific moments with kindness and love. 

The children are ours, every single one of them all over the globe…James Baldwin

My entire life has been filled with children. Before I went to work as a teacher I had two daughters of my own and watched the five youngsters of others inside my home while their mothers took care of jobs and other business. While juggling classes at the University of Houston I landed a position as a preschool teacher that convinced me that my life’s work should be devoted to young people. After sending an editorial letter regarding some of the homilies being presented at my parish church the pastor visited my home and surprised me by agreeing with my complaints and convincing me to become a Sunday school teacher. Eventually the nuns directing the program tapped me to oversee the classes for preschoolers through the fifth grade as they exited to do community work. I somehow kept all the educational balls in my repertoire in the air while I finally obtained my degree and certification to be a teacher.

I bounced from school to school for a time, starting with an assignment at a Catholic school where I was the math teacher for all of the students in grades six through eight. I had six different classes to prepare each day but what might have been an onerous job for some became an exciting adventure that told me that I was doing what I was always meant to do. My enthusiasm for my students energized me in spite of the long hours of standing on my feet attempting to interest and challenge my charges while understanding the needs of each individual. Oh how I loved those young men and women!

More for a better income than any other reason, I next worked as a fourth grade teacher of every subject that the children needed with the exception of PE and music. I had even more preparations to make for three reading groups, social studies, science, math, art and a few other duties thrown in here and there. The students were much more diverse and economically disadvantaged than those at the private school but once again I adored them even as a little voice was telling me that I wanted to focus on the middle school aged pupils who are so often viewed as difficult. When a new opportunity arose I grabbed it in spite of the fact that I adored the principal of the elementary school and learned how to be a real teacher from her.

I enjoyed the growing pains of my middle school students with boundless joy. Somehow I got them and they got me. I taught wealthy young people from powerful families and youngsters who lived in poverty. It didn’t seem to matter whether they were altar boys or gang members, I loved them all and felt that they were part of my great big extended family.

Over the years I spent many a sleepless night worrying about my students and even when I retired there was never a day when I did not think of them. Most of them are in their thirties, forties, and fifties, now. I do my best to keep up with them, rejoice in their achievements and grieve when I hear of their difficulties. I also still teach and tutor a small group of young people a few hours each week. I no longer have the fortitude to spend eight to ten hours on my feet with little more than a few short breaks, but I miss the long days that began in the dark and rarely ended before ten at night. It was then that I knew true happiness in my vocation.

I have felt an almost spiritual devotion to the children and young adults who came my way. I did my best to nurture them, guide them, love them. I enjoyed being a Dean of Faculty and providing assistance to the teachers. I understood the enormity and importance of their tasks. I learned from them and became as close to them as I had always been to my students.

I truly believe that those children, even the more grown up ones, are ours and that we have a duty to make sure that they will be okay. There should be no strings attached to what we might do for them, no budgetary restraints that do not allow us to provide them with whatever they need to fulfill their talents and dreams. We should be focused on and dedicated to providing them with every opportunity to reach the potential that is inside each and every one of them. There is no investment that a society might make that is more wonderful than insuring that no child in ever afraid, hungry, sick, or uneducated. Every one of them is unique and longing to become the best of themselves. It matters not what language they speak, where they live, what appearance they may have. The children should always be our number one priority. We should minister to them without prejudice or avarice. If we have to sacrifice to make their lives comfortable and meaningful, so be it.

It has been a great honor to work with children over many decades. There is no job, that compares. The satisfaction that I have felt in knowing that thousands of souls are now productive and able to care for themselves and their loved ones because I played a part in educating them is immeasurable. I truly cannot understand why anyone would become stingy with the resources and care that they all need. To deny even one child anywhere in the world a childhood filled with wonder and discovery seems almost to be a sin. If we were all to focus on the children with love most problems would disappear. We cannot reserve our opportunities for only those like us. Our largess for children must be given freely and happily to all.